NINA

Nina Brazil

'Young Nina, an intelligent and talented comic-strip artist, has a full-time job attending hip parties and scraping together enough money to finance her lifestyle. This latter activity is however not very successful and she has great difficulty coughing up the rent for landlady Eulália. The two housemates make life as difficult as possible for each other and the everyday harassment goes from bad to worse. Nina's situation in the chaos of São Paulo gets increasingly grim and she flees more often and further into the world of her violent comic strips. Slowly but surely she slides into insanity. If only the old hag Eulália wasn't around to get in her way'

'In his first feature, Heitor Dhalia dives into the sick mind of an unusual girl. This psychological thriller is interspersed with manga-like animations that reveal part of the world of experience of Nina, in which she takes out her fury and aggression on her landlady. The story could be set in every large hectic city, but the maker wants to show a reality that is typical of today's Brazil, where violence, poverty and misery rule, especially among young people.' -Rotterdam Film Festival

D Heitor Dhalia P Fabiano Gullane, Gaio Gullane S Heitor Dhalia, Marçal Aquino WS Gullane Filmes L Portuguese w/English subtitles TD 35mm/Col/2004/85mins

Heitor Dhalia's films include: Conceiçao (1999, short).